The rare disease that isn’t, Celiac Disease, Gluten Enteropathy or Autoimmune Grain Allergy.
What Causes Celiac Disease?
Celiac Disease is unique. Most autoimmune diseases have multiple inciting agents, or science has yet to discover the inciting agent/agents. The inciting agent in Celiac Disease is gluten, which is prevalent in most grains. The disease is passed on genetically, so to have the disease you must carry the gene in your genetic makeup, and usually there is some family history of food allergy.
Carrying the gene doesn’t always guarantee the disease, and some genetic carriers may go their entire lives without ever suffering the symptoms. Additionally, a person can have a normally functioning digestive tract for many years or many decades before an adverse event, or trigger, sets off the disease. The trigger can be an emotional event, exposure to an environmental irritant/pollutant, infection, or medication.
How Celiac Disease Affects Us (the masquerade)
Celiac disease is a disease of malabsorption, and, therefore, affects every aspect of physiology. Proper digestion and absorption is necessary for every organ system to receive the essential chemicals (fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals) needed to function optimally. Because it is a disease that affects multiple systems, it presents a complicated symptomatic picture that often defies early diagnosis. Although one would expect the primary presenting symptoms to be diarrhea and/or constipation, weight loss and/or weight gain, foul smelling stools and abdominal pain, this typical expected pattern is present only about 20% of the time. The diagnostic pattern can be one of fatigue, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, ADD & ADHD, and even diabetes. Attitude change is usually a prime component as more “happy hormone” production takes place in the gut than in the brain. As a result, depression & anxiety is almost always present in Celiac disease.
How Often Does Celiac Disease Occur?
The official prevalence of Celiac disease now stands at 1 in 133. Although it affects less than 1% of the population, Celiac disease is thought to account for as much as 35% of all chronic disease cases. The average time to diagnosis is 8 to 10 years, and by the time the diagnosis is made, there is usually severe irreversible damage to the villous architecture of the intestines.
What You Can Do
Most patients diagnose themselves over a period of time, and then bring the diagnosis to the doctor. Unfortunately, the diagnosis is determined by taking a biopsy (usually multiple biopsies) of the intestinal tract, and if an area of intestinal wall destruction is not seen, Celiac disease will not be diagnosed. By the time a firm diagnosis is usually made, the average patient has very little normal intestinal function left, and the damage is mostly irreversible.
Eliminating grain from the diet for a few weeks to a few months can provide excellent information. If the symptom pattern, no matter how varied, abates when grain is eliminated and returns when grain is reintroduced, it is wise to assume that in time the disease/symptom pattern will progress to a possible Celiac diagnosis and the irreversible damage that goes with it. If the symptoms that you or your loved ones seem to respond to nothing that would be considered “standard and customary” in the way of treatment, running a trial of grain elimination can be insightful.
My point of view
I think we Americans over consume grains. We have been encouraged to do so by our governmental agencies that have a long history of being wrong. One of the most popular European diet books reads true to its title, Life Without Bread, by Allan and Lutz.
Here in America, the Atkins Diet has been the most popular diet book with over 14 million purchased, and against extraordinary opposition from the AMA. Lately, this approach has increased in popularity because it produces such remarkable results in people who want to feel better and lose weight.
A few books that I consider spin offs of Atkins are The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, The South Beach Diet and The Zone Diet. All suggest a virtual elimination of simple carbohydrates in the initial stages, and that’s when dieters experience the most relief from symptoms.
Could the success of these diets be in part due to their producing relief for the sufferer of Celiac symptoms? I think the answer is “Yes.” Therefore, if you are having an unusual array of undiagnosable symptoms, whether your bowel movements are involved or not, wouldn’t it be wise to do a grain elimination diet for a month and watch for symptom improvement?
NAET and Celiac Disease
I don’t see much Celiac disease in the practice, and by the time a patient would present with that diagnosis the damage would already be, to a large degree, irreversible. However, I believe that we catch a great many Celiacs, especially children, pre-diagnosis.
Grain is a major allergen, and NAET testing demonstrates a positive response in over 80% of the patients that come to my office. In almost all cases, the results are outstanding if we can catch the disease before too much permanent damage has occurred. To the best of my knowledge, NAET allergy treatment is the only therapy available that is capable of reversing an auto-immune disease, demonstrating that genetic outcomes can be modified. If gluten sensitivity is suspected, I feel the logical course of action is a home clinical elimination trial followed by NAET therapy.
Related article: A Functional Diet